It’s a scene that would make the blood of any parent run cold. Your teenage daughter is lying drunk on the ground, abandoned by her friends and surrounded by strangers and one male wants to put her in a taxi and take her home.

But for the volunteers from Cheltenham Guardians, alarm bells are ringing. They ask him the girl’s name but he doesn’t know it. He then becomes verbally aggressive and threatens to kill them.

Incidents like this are all in a night’s work for the team who patrol the streets every Saturday night safeguarding young people.

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For as night falls on the elegant Regency buildings, just like every other big town and city in the UK, young revellers are out to have a good time and when there is alcohol involved, they can find themselves vulnerable and in danger.

Terry Howard of the Cheltenham Guardians

"A dark twist"

“It can happen in the blink of an eye,” says Cheltenham Guardians founder, Terry Howard.

“One minute everything is fine, then the booze kicks in, they get separated from their friends and all of a sudden the scenario starts to take on a dark twist.”

Terry, 43, says the idea for the Cheltenham Guardians was born on ‘a cold November morning’ three years ago.

“I wanted to give something back to the community and help people less fortunate than myself,” he says.

The group now has around 13 volunteers with a team of three or four out on the streets on a Saturday night.

Cheltenham Guardians in action

“The remit is to safeguard young people, reach out to the homeless and respond to community emergencies,” says Terry who has just been shortlisted as a semi-finalist in the Breeze Charity Champions Award, sponsored by Volunteering Gloucestershire.

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“I was immediately humbled to find I had been short-listed but I get my reward every Saturday night through the work that we do. What we do is massively rewarding.”

Witnessed a sexual assault

Although around 70 per cent of the incidents the Guardians help out with involves women, Terry says they also deal with 30 per cent of young males who find themselves in a vulnerable position.

Terry and his team have witnessed a sexual assault, taken someone to hospital after they fell and cut their head and their friends had left them.

They have walked someone across town because they are too scared to do so themselves, kept a victim safe after an assault while they waited for an ambulance to come and driven a 15-year-old home who had been out all night.

Guardians on duty in Cheltenham on September 22. (Image: Cheltenham Guardians.)

“I have put my hand in someone’s mouth to clear away vomit to preserve their airways after finding them unconscious,” says Terry who often arrives home covered in blood or vomit, or both.

This team of selfless ordinary people doing extraordinary things see themselves as a vanguard of young adult safekeeping.

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“A typical evening can range from minor interactions such as seeing an individual gets home safely to serious incidents such as protecting someone from a predatory third party.

“Help can range from basic first-aid to pre-paramedic care or calling in police assistance.

"We will never go home before your children"

“But our commitment to parents is we will never go home before your children. On a Sunday morning we are the last to leave Cheltenham. Whatever the circumstances we will be the last ones standing,” says Terry.

Cheltenham Guardians in action

The Guardians work in partnership with Gloucestershire Police and Cheltenham Borough Council and recently widened their volunteering the help deliver water to people in Winchcombe after they were left without supplies during the recent severe weather. They also offered to pick up prescriptions for people who were snowed in.

“We still have a lot of work ahead of us and we don’t want to get too big too quickly, we are growing slowly,” says Terry.